The long-term objective of the proposed research is to gain a better understanding of the processes and representations underlying spoken word recognition. Substantial empirical evidence now exists in support of the hypothesis that surface variability in speech has both processing and representational implications. The processing work demonstrates that variability in speech, such as a change in the identity of a talker, hinders perception, resulting in slower and/or less accurate spoken word recognition. The representational work demonstrates that variability also has long-term consequences for the perception of spoken words, suggesting that the representations underlying spoken word recognition can include highly specific surface details. Furthermore, recent work also suggests that variability effects follow a time course, manifesting themselves at predictable points during perceptual processing. More specifically, some types of surface variability do not seem to affect early stages of spoken word recognition. Rather, abstract linguistic representations appear to drive the initial on-line perception of spoken words and more specific representations, containing surface details associated with variability, only affect latter stages of processing. The aim of the proposed work is to provide a more immediate and fine-grained analysis of the time course of variability effects. In particular, behavioral measures of the time course effects of two sources of variability, talker-identity and speaking rate, will be collected using the eye-tracking paradigm. The proposed research should ultimately lead to better theories and models of both normal and disordered spoken language perception. [unreadable] [unreadable]